Growing Up
by SKJC
Summary: Hunter was pretty sure that even though he wasn't normal to begin with, you weren't supposed to want to kiss your little brother.


**Notes/Warnings**: Slash, and while not technically incest it's still gonna hit your squick-meter for the implied sex. Uh, also some swearing. Oh, and I guess underage drinking is a warning. xD I don't own the Power Rangers. Or Wal-Mart. Or the Karate Kid films. :o Oneshot!

**Growing Up**

--

The first time Blake slept in his brother's bed was the night after Sensei Omino had informed them of their parents' deaths. Hunter had refused to believe it and stormed out of the room in the throes of a temper tantrum, while the younger boy sat sobbing in their teacher's quarters.

Hunter hadn't wanted a brother. When his parents had told him they were going to give another child a home just like they did for him, he had protested loudly, secretly afraid of losing the affection of the only family he'd ever really known. And the little boy they'd introduced him to was practically a baby, five years old compared to Hunter's boastful six-and-three-quarters, and Hunter thought he was a mousey little wuss.

He'd grown to like his little brother a lot more in the two years since then, but privately he still thought Blake was kind of a crybaby. Hunter knew from experience that telling him that only made him cry more, though, so when Blake peeked into his room in the middle of the night, teary-eyed and clutching his baby blanket in one fist, Hunter let him come in.

"Is it true what Sensei said?" Blake asked, sniffling and wiping at his face. "Mommy and Daddy aren't gonna come home?" He climbed onto Hunter's bed, clutched his knees to his chest, and looked at his older brother. He trusted Hunter more than he trusted Sensei, even though he couldn't imagine their beloved teacher would lie to him - he just didn't want to believe it.

"Yeah." Hunter's voice contained an intense mixture of anger and sadness. "They're dead. That's like..." He tried to figure out how to explain it. Sensei probably told the boy something stupid about spirits passing on or whatever, and he knew that Blake (and him too for that matter) were way too young for that dumb 'ninja wisdom' crap. "It's like when you go to sleep and don't wake up, 'cause you're sick or hurt or just old and your body stops working," he explained sullenly, fighting the urge to cry as he spoke. Blake was the one who cried, not him, and he was determined to keep it that way - at least where anybody else could see.

Blake looked at him, wide-eyed in the dark, and latched onto him in a tight hug. "Are you gonna die too, Hunter?"

"Everybody's gonna die," Hunter replied truthfully, and he realized that was a bad answer when Blake started sobbing again. "I mean.. Look, it's mostly adults who die, okay? We're just kids. So I'm gonna be around for a while, so don't cry like that." He sighed.

"We're still gonna be together even without Mommy and Daddy, right?" Blake asked, his small voice muffled since his face was still buried in Hunter's chest. "Mommy told me that her and Daddy made us all a family 'cause you and me didn't have any."

Hunter was silent for a moment, thinking about it. "Absolutely," he decided. "I told Mom I was gonna look out for you, so I'm always gonna be by your side, no matter what. All we've got now is each other, and nothing's ever gonna change that."

"Promise?" Blake was still sniffling a bit.

"I promise."

--

After that, they trained hard, applying a single-minded determination to everything they did: When it wasn't their schooling, it was ninja training, swordwork, learning to control their element - Thunder was tricky and could be quite dangerous. When Hunter wheedled Sensei into getting him a dirtbike, he applied the same determination into learning to ride as he tore through the forests around the Academy, occasionally running into trees, thorny bushes, and small wildlife.

Of course, it didn't take very long for their sensei and surrogate father to grow sick of their bickering over whether or not Blake was allowed to play on Hunter's bike, and so for Blake's birthday that year, he got his own.

Privately, the teacher wished they would have chosen a slightly less suicidal hobby, but by the time the brothers were fourteen and twelve years old respectively, they'd both earned somewhat of a reputation on the local youth racing circuits, and he had to admit that perhaps they had talent. And he couldn't doubt their devotion to their ninja training, either - they both far surpassed all but the Academy's top students, most of whom were much older.

Hunter chose to go to public high school in the neighboring town that year, much to Blake's dismay. They had previously been homeschooled at the Academy.

"You're gonna be old enough to go in a couple years, too," Hunter tried to console him. "I'm just sick of being around here all the time.. It's not like I'm moving away or quitting ninja training."

"Yeah, but you're gonna be gone five days a week," Blake argued. "What's so great about high school?"

Hunter didn't answer right away. The truth was that he had met a guy at the track that he was pretty sure, in his hormone-addled teenage mind, that he had a crush on - they'd kissed on several occasions behind a storage shed at the track, which had only served to banish any doubts Hunter had about his preferences in that regard. He hadn't ever bothered looking at girls, and had definitely gotten the message that he wasn't normal, but shrugged it off as part of his usual disregard for normalcy. It was totally overrated, anyway.

To his credit, Hunter had stopped sharing a bed with his brother right around the time he had to start reminding himself that Blake was his brother, despite the lack of blood relation between them.

"I met somebody I kinda like," Hunter finally answered, a vague sense of evasiveness slipping into his voice. "And they're going to be at school too."

Blake rolled his eyes. "Oh. You met a GIRL," he quipped sarcastically.

"Not... exactly." Hunter paused. "I, uh.. I don't really like girls that much."

"Me either," Blake wrinkled his nose, "but Sensei and everybody keeps saying I'm gonna change my mind when I grow up."

"No, I mean.." Hunter stopped again. This was stupid, he decided. "I guess I like guys the way you're supposed to like girls, is what I mean."

"So?" Blake asked.

"Lots of people don't like that," Hunter explained with a sigh. His brother seemed so terribly young and sheltered sometimes.

"Why not?"

"I dunno. They say stuff like it's disgusting, and only guys and girls are supposed to fall in love with each other, not guys and other guys, so it's unnatural or something." Hunter shook his head. He really didn't get it and attributed it to people being afraid of anything that differed from the norm.

Blake studied him for a moment, obviously thinking about what his brother was saying. "I love you, though, and I'm not a girl."

"Well, we're brothers. It's different," Hunter explained. "You're supposed to love your family - I'm talking about like in the movies with holding hands and kissing and sleeping together and stuff."

"Is that why you don't let me sleep in your room anymore?" Blake wanted to know. "'Cause I think that's a dumb reason."

Hunter cringed. "We're just too old for that anymore," he replied uneasily. This conversation had now crossed into territory that was making him terribly uncomfortable.

Blake grumbled something unintelligible as he turned on his heel and left Hunter alone with his thoughts.. But the younger boy wore a huge grin the next morning at breakfast when Hunter announced he had changed his mind about going to school.

--

On Blake's fifteenth birthday, they both competed in the season closer for the state amateur motocross championships - the first year they both completed the entire season. They fought for position throughout both races, and Hunter finally managed to edge his little brother out for the third-place spot on the podium in their class.

Everyone was partying hard that night, but the Bradleys ditched the riders' end-of-season dinner early - pretty much as soon as they'd both accepted their awards for the season. Hunter may have won the final round, but Blake beat him in the season overall points standings, finishing in fourth place to Hunter's sixth. For all that Hunter grumbled about it, Blake was getting to be a much more consistent athlete than he was.

Hunter hauled their bikes around in an ancient trailer hitched to his equally ancient truck, which had an awful little pop-up camper in the truck bed that looked like it had been around when God created dirt, but it had a bed, a fridge, and an old TV with rabbit ears that Hunter figured only worked about a third of the time. Next to the families who showed up in their forty-foot RVs, they really looked out of place, but their methodical attention to detail in their racing more than made up for it.

Sensei Omino had been horribly glad when Hunter got to be old enough to drive, because he no longer had to appoint various teachers to take them to their races anymore. Ninja teachers tended to complain when they had to babysit their boss's 'kids' at dirtbike tracks every other weekend. Hunter and Blake were, of course, equally pleased to have some level of freedom from the watchful eyes of their teachers, and generally avoided abusing the privilege. Of course, some occasions called for a slight bending of the rules.

Hunter figured that with the combination of Blake's birthday, them both finishing top ten in the championship, and his getting a podium spot in the final round, this particular occasion called for throwing the rules out the window. He pulled the bottle of champagne he'd stolen from the awards dinner out of his backpack.

"Hey, we got any cups? I think drinking this stuff out of the bottle might be kind of trashy," Hunter deadpanned, flipping on the TV. They got three channels on it, he knew one of them was running a marathon of the Karate Kid films, and one of the interests they shared aside from motocross was definitely campy martial arts movies. "And how about popcorn?"

Blake threw a couple plastic cups at him. "Dude, I think we ate everything we brought with us already." Between the two of them, they could easily eat more food in three days than the camper could hold. "And we're camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot, so I think we might already be 'kind of trashy.'"

Hunter laughed. "Go check behind the front seat of the truck, I think there were a couple bags of food up there."

Blake complained, but came back a minute later with a grocery bag. "Cheese puffs and corn chips? This is food?"

"Hey, we ate dinner already," Hunter grinned, holding out one of the plastic cups of champagne he had poured. "Come on, movie's about to start." It was nearly eight PM.

"Real classy, bro." Blake took the cup and joined him on the tiny slide-out bed. He was thrilled when Hunter let him sit as close as they had to in order to be comfortable in such close quarters - it was something he hadn't been allowed at home for far too long, and he'd take what he could get.

By the end of the second film, they'd worked their way through both bags of snack food and the entire bottle of champagne, and Hunter definitely knew he had overdone it a little when he was laughing at things without knowing why they were funny. Meanwhile, Blake was terribly flushed in the face and seemed content at that point to wrap himself around Hunter, nearly in his lap, and giggle at the television.

Hunter wanted to protest the arrangement - even with his impaired judgement he knew he probably should - but it had been a long weekend, he was sore from pushing himself after a bad crash in their first warmup practice, and Blake was warm and comfortable and he was really too relaxed to mind much.

That is, until Blake wrapped his arms around Hunter's neck and shifted so he actually was sitting in Hunter's lap, and settled his face into the crook of the older boy's neck.

Hunter's head was spinning. "Hey," he protested weakly. "What d'ya think you're doing?"

"Nothin'," came the slightly muffled reply, accompanied by a contented sigh. "Love you, Hunter," Blake murmured.

Hunter mentally added alcohol to the list of stuff that made Blake clingy and overly affectionate. 'For future birthdays we'll have to stick to cake and punch,' he thought. "Love you too. Watch the movie." He ruffled Blake's hair.

"Don't want to," Blake mumbled, and Hunter jumped as he felt Blake's lips tracing a pattern on the side of his neck. He grabbed Blake's arms and pulled him away slightly.

"I'm only gonna ask this one more time," Hunter demanded, failing horribly at sounding threatening as his voice wavered. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I want to be close to you," Blake pouted. "You never let me."

"Because it's inappropriate," Hunter replied unsteadily. "Especially stuff like that!"

"I like it," Blake informed him, "and so do you. So what's the problem?"

"Do I need to make you a list?" Hunter snapped. "You're my brother. You're fourteen - okay, fifteen now, but still! You're drunk off your ass. Just because you're confused or something doesn't mean I can take advantage of you." He really didn't mean to say that part. "Sensei would kill us both."

"So don't tell Sensei. After all, I don't remember you telling him about you doing who-knows-what with guys from the track when YOU were fourteen."

Hunter's resolve was crumbling. He couldn't believe how beyond screwed up this was. "This only seems like a good idea 'cause we're both drunk."

"Seems like a good idea 'cause you want me." Blake smirked. "Besides, I wasn't the one who stole the alcohol."

Hunter squeezed his eyes shut briefly, trying to force his mind to work. "I am so going to hell," he muttered.

Blake leaned in against him again. "Right there with you," he whispered in Hunter's ear, licking at the lobe and grinning as he felt Hunter's breath catch.

"Coy is not a good look for you," Hunter managed. Blake pulled back and smiled innocently.

"Really? Then why's it working?"

The older ninja did not have an answer for that.

--

Hunter woke up the next morning to sunlight streaming in the window and a throbbing headache. The next thing he processed was that he was still propped up in the corner, the TV was still on - playing some stupid infomercial - and that Blake was asleep on his chest. He slowly recalled the previous night, realizing exactly why they'd ended up sleeping in their track pants and nothing else.

"Great. That was probably the most counter-productive thing I've done all year," he muttered, shifting his weight to alleviate the pressure the uncomfortable position was putting on his already-sore neck.

"I dunno," Blake commented sleepily, lifting his head slightly. "That crash the other morning was pretty counter-productive. At least this was fun."

"Thought you were asleep," Hunter commented casually, yawning and shielding his eyes from the light. "It's too damn bright outside."

"I was." Blake shut his eyes again, wincing, and settled back down. "And yeah. It is. Shut up and go back to sleep."

Hunter glanced at the clock. "It's already past 8. We need to be back to school by noon or Sensei's gonna throw a fit, and traffic sucks on Monday mornings."

Blake sighed, but rolled off to one side of the narrow bed. "Gimme five more minutes," he mumbled, clutching a pillow.

Hunter grabbed his shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head, making a mental note that a shower would be the first thing on his agenda when they got home. He rummaged through the duffel bag at the foot of the bed for a bottle of Tylenol and a room-temperature bottle of water.

"Five minutes are up," he informed the sleeping boy, prodding him in the shoulder. "Get up."

"Are not," Blake grumbled, but he sat up anyway, rubbing his eyes. Hunter handed him a couple of the Tylenol and the half-empty water bottle, which he took gratefully.

"I'm gonna check the hitch, the tie-downs, and all that. Get dressed and get up in the truck so we can get going."

Blake looked at his brother curiously. "You mad at me?" He asked, picking through the clothes in the floor for a moment before he found one of his blue Yamaha jerseys and shrugged it on.

Hunter cleared his throat. "No. Just still trying to figure out what the hell got into you."

"I don't know what you mean." Blake grinned.

Hunter raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, right. You know exactly what I mean! Apparently having a couple drinks turns you into some kind of sex kitten!" He sounded exasperated.

The dark-haired boy laughed. "That is so not the way I would put it!"

"Well, hell," Hunter grumbled. "You sure seemed to know what you were doing." He narrowed his eyes. "What exactly have you been up to?"

"Hey, chalk it up to curiosity! I never even kissed anybody before last night," Blake protested defensively. "And are you always like this after you get laid? That might explain why you've been single for the past, what, three years?"

Hunter shook his head. "This is so fucked up," he swore.

"Since when have you had a problem with fucked up?" Blake wanted to know. "I think that sums up our lives pretty well anyway."

"How are you so okay with this?" Hunter demanded.

Blake shrugged. "You wanted me for a while. I wanted you too. An opportunity came up. If I wasn't "okay with this" then I wouldn't have done anything. You're the one with a problem and I don't understand why. I'm pretty sure the fact that I'm talking you into this is proof that you're not taking advantage of me or whatever stupid stuff you're worried about." He stopped to take a breath. "And now for fuck's sake, stop making me talk until my head stops hurting."

Hunter blinked twice. "When the hell did you grow up?"

"When you were trying awfully hard not to pay attention."

--


End file.
